suffering/joy

(I know this post is long, but I figured I owed a good solid one since I haven't written anything worth reading since last Saturday.)

Back when I took anatomy, one thing I found interesting was the way your body adapts to certain situations. Most of your senses-- sight, taste, smell, hearing-- immediately begin adapting to the stimuli being presented. When you step from a dark room outside into the sunshine, your iris contracts around your pupil to let less light in. When someone sitting next to you on the bus is wearing a ton of perfume or cologne, olfactory adaptation kicks in, and your brain adjusts until you can't smell it anymore. Adaptation keeps your brain from getting overloaded/confused and your body from being physically hurt.
The one sense that doesn't adapt is your sense of touch. No matter how many times a kid falls down and skins his knee, it is still going to hurt just as bad every time. Maybe that kid will get older and get used to it, so he won't cry as hard, and it won't seem as awful, but the exact same pain receptors respond every time in the exact same way. Unless your nerves die, they are as dependable as freaking clockwork.
When you think about it, it makes sense-- if you adapted to pain, then the older you got, the stupider things you would be doing without realizing the impact it could have on your body. If I run my finger through a flame once, and it hurts, but the next time I do it, it doesn't hurt, then what's going to stop me from doing it a third time? And meanwhile, even though it doesn't physically hurt me, my finger is being burned. My skin cells are dying.
What does change, though, is your control over your body; your tolerance of the pain that is inflicted. As you get older, you can recognize pain and differentiate what is dangerous and what is just annoying. If I fell down today and skinned my knee, I probably wouldn't cry as much as I did when I was eight. But not because it doesn't hurt just as much. Physiologically, the exact same thing is happening. But my brain can respond better. Instead of going, "Mommy, I'm bleeding!!!" I can go, "Look, it's just a little blood, it could be a lot worse, so go get a band-aid and you'll be fine." Pain doesn't ever hurt less, you just get smarter about it.
This is just theory from my own personal experience... but I think the same thing is true of your emotions. I have been through a lot of stuff in my short life. And even though, on some level, it gets easier, it also doesn't. Every time something bad happens, it hurts me just as much. The only difference I have noticed is that my response has changed. I am more logical; I have gotten smarter. I actually have the ability to, in the middle of a crappy situation, say to myself, "It's really okay, God is going to take care of it." Not, "Holy shit, this is so awful that I want to die." And I really think that is just a product of growing up and experiencing a lot of pain. It's the same as that split second you have when you look down at your bleeding knee and decide, okay, that hurts, but I'm not going to freak out about it.
Sometimes, it sucks, because it takes experiencing the pain to learn about it. And every time it happens, it hurts just as much. Just because you know you can handle a small burn or a skinned knee, doesn't mean you want it or go out looking for it. It just means that when it happens, you're ready, and you're not going to fall apart.

The reason why I say all this is because, on Tuesday in our studio meeting, we talked about suffering, and I have been thinking about it all week. And what I said to everyone on Tuesday was, there comes a point in the middle of all your pain where you just... balance out. A lot of times, nothing changes. Nothing "gets better". You just push through it and there is joy on the other end. The coexistance of joy and suffering is something so beautiful that is literally indescribable. It is the kind of thing that, until you experience it, you will always be skeptical of.
Anyway, I said this on Tuesday at the meeting, at which point I had a lot of issues on my plate already. But there were ones that I had handled. Then, yesterday, my brother made another poor life choice, and that messed up the balance again. So as I laid in bed awake early this morning, I thought to myself, do I still believe what I said before, that there is joy in all of this? Do I stand by that when there is pain too real and fresh to ignore or put away? And, even though I am hurt and mad and scared, the answer is yes. God doesn't change, and if he is my focus, nothing can really shake me. Which is an incredible feeling.

One other thing I thought about today: back in the day, when I first learned to type/use computers, they required you to put two spaces between a period and the start of a new sentence. I always got in trouble for ignoring that rule because it didn't make sense, and now, no one ever does it. People don't even capitalize or use proper punctuation anymore. I wonder what my elementary school teacher would say about that...